A antecedently unpublished cache of Polaroids by Emily Shur, dating from 2002 to 2009, provides a portal to this distant age. At the time, Shur was an in-demand personage lensman for specified magazines arsenic GQ, Spin, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, Elle, and People, with subjects ranging from movie stars and rappers to the boy-faced Mark Zuckerberg. Some of her pictures seizure the self-conscious whimsy that was fashionable successful personage photography: kooky props, candy-bright flowers, stars posing successful bathtubs oregon with corded landlines. Shur changeable connected a large-format camera, which required “a cardinal light-meter readings,” she told maine recently. Then she’d person the movie developed astatine a lab. In the days earlier digital, she couldn’t spot precisely however the representation would crook retired portion she was connected set. The champion she could bash was to instrumentality a Polaroid arsenic a speedy reference, past people it up with directions (“BRIGHTER,” “MATCH”) for the lab.
The Polaroids were meant arsenic throwaways—an intermediate measurement successful a process that would culminate successful a glossy last image—but Shur ne'er threw them out. She kept them, successful meticulously labelled IKEA drawers, astatine her location office, successful Los Angeles. “I ne'er wanted to get escaped of them, due to the fact that they’re 1 of a kind,” she said. “And the colour palette is truthful specific. It’s really precise hard to get those tones connected film.” Sometimes her favourite photos from a sprout were the Polaroids. “Maybe it’s a infinitesimal erstwhile the endowment isn’t being excessively self-conscious, due to the fact that they’re, like, Oh, it’s conscionable a Polaroid. So they’re capable to chill retired a small spot and springiness you thing that they’re not going to springiness you erstwhile you state that we’ve started shooting for real.”
Revisiting the pictures recently, Shur realized that they correspond a clip capsule successful 2 ways—culturally, since the faces connected show seizure a bygone epoch of fame, and technologically, since the emergence of integer photography soon obviated the request for notation images. Shur’s archetypal integer shoots were astir 2006, but “I truly tried to clasp disconnected arsenic agelong arsenic I could,” she said. “It’s a precise antithetic mode of composing a picture. It’s a precise antithetic mode of interacting with the subject.” Digital was quicker and cheaper, truthful magazines yet started requiring it. But the instant results meant that celebrities (and their publicists and stylists) could hover implicit Shur’s shoulder. She missed the enigma of the large-format camera and the powerfulness it gave her.
Shur grew up successful Houston and discovered photography successful precocious school. Her chamber walls were covered successful torn pages from manner magazines: “very nineties high-school vibes, similar supermodels and Annie Leibovitz.” She studied photography astatine New York University and worked arsenic a photograph and creation section adjunct astatine Rolling Stone, until her brag told her, “I tin archer you’re not loving this job. You privation to beryllium shooting.” In 2001, she got what seemed similar her large break, a multipage dispersed of 3 car designers for Rolling Stone. At 1 of the shoots, idiosyncratic broke into her car and stole her equipment. The adjacent time was 9/11. She didn’t cognize what would hap to the car-designer feature, but it came retired successful the November issue. The pursuing year, she landed her archetypal gig for Interview, shooting up-and-coming musicians—one of whom was Avril Lavigne, who rapidly became a household name. “Just having her successful my portfolio was highly large for me,” Shur said.
For the remainder of the decade—the years represented by these Polaroids—she was booked and busy. “It was specified a play of maturation for maine arsenic a photographer,” Shur told me. “I truly recovered myself, I’d say.” (She’s since released monographs exploring her travels to Japan and her neighborhood successful L.A.) The Polaroids, meanwhile, archer immoderate unexpected tales. Some of her subjects, past astatine the pinnacle of fame, person since gone down unusual paths. Cheryl Hines, whom she changeable for Entertainment Weekly, was known astatine the clip for “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” One Polaroid shows a conception that wasn’t yet used, with Hines’s mascara moving down her stoic face—a defiant-martyr look that carries an unintended irony, present that Hines is notorious arsenic the woman of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Other Polaroids seizure the philharmonic moment: a grinning Ghostface Killah (“He was precise bummed that helium was smiling”); a shirtless Coolio (“Coolio was late”); a frilly Nicole Scherzinger, past the ascendant pb vocalist of the Pussycat Dolls. Kid Rock, whom she changeable for Spin, astatine his spot successful Michigan, was known arsenic a flashy state rocker and not yet arsenic a Trumpist firebrand. The shoot, Shur said, progressive a batch of “loud” poses of the creator successful his “ugly leather overgarment and hat,” but the Polaroid catches him looking uncharacteristically subdued astatine his keyboard: “I was unsure if helium was going to beryllium down to instrumentality those quieter pictures, and helium was.”
Kid Rock, 2003.
Amanda Seyfried, 2008.
Some of the antheral actors evoke the indie-boy chill origin of the time: Adam Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Peter Sarsgaard. The “Scrubs” prima Zach Braff, who defined a definite twee-depressive counterculture with his 2004 movie “Garden State,” posed for Interview successful a tweedy jacket. “I had a precise innocent, nonrecreational crush connected him astatine the time,” Shur recalled with a sigh. “I was, like, In different life, maine and this bully Jewish lad from New Jersey could person been great.”
In the shoots she recalls astir fondly, the subjects were collaborators, consenting to spell to eccentric places. Shur changeable the manner decorator Jeremy Scott successful her backmost gait astatine the time, successful Echo Park, successful beforehand of her cattle statue. Mike Gordon, the bassist for Phish, ended up successful a bathtub with his instrument. “The progression to get to that changeable was impactful for maine personally,” she said. “I didn’t ever cognize precisely however to inquire for what I wanted, and helium benignant of offered it up.” Similarly, Danger Mouse decided that helium wanted to airs with a feline dressed arsenic the Grim Reaper and marque grilled cheese: “That’s 1 of those pictures wherever I truly felt, like, I fucking nailed this.”
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